OK. The results of your poll are seriously interesting so far. But:
I never converted. I loathe gps and never use it unless I have to.
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I thought about adding that caveat, but the option was already long winded.
(I just got the amusing idea to hide responses to common DOS commands in a parser game as an easter egg, lol.)
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…I wouldn’t say this. Hypertext systems can typically be operated in a manner consistent with the primary mode of interaction in the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model common to most GUIs, but also by keyboard on a pointerless device.
No one considers a Gopher client running in a terminal to be a GUI. But text-only hypertext games grossly resemble Gopher, and, with enough cussedness, one could implement a choice game in Gopher.
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I understand what you’re getting at, but I feel like you’re edgecasing a wee bit.
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Also, again, this is 100% conjecture on my part. I’m not claiming to have run a study or anything. It’s just I realized that every time I need to use a command line for something, I feel the same disorientation I get when starting a new parser game, and I wondered if it’s because they require similar kinds of mental environment modeling.
I mean, given how much you seem to enjoy parser games, this runs entirely counter to my conjecture, so this thread could absolutely benefit from your input! 
Okay, yes you’re technically correct, but the conjecture I was making here was not “terminal vs web browser”. It was “memorized environment vs environment with visible, up-to-date options”, so running a click-based game in Gopher doesn’t actually change anything related to the conjecture.
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i mean, the memory thing is part of why we like the idea of adding an informative status bar and maybe even a visual map (maybe in ASCII lol) to our parser games…
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I agree with @JoshGrams 's points above and would expand on them (in a way Josh might or might not agree with – I wouldn’t want to claim to speak for him!):
There is nothing essential about parser games, the medium, that necessitates games requiring a user to build a mental model of the space.There is nothing essential about choice games, the medium, that precludes them being written to do so.
What there are are a lot of inessential, but weighty conventions about how different kinds of games work.
If you’ve played a few ChoiceScript games, you quickly internalize an understanding that the choices you make have narrative weight. They’re making declarations about who the player character is. You expect these declarations to affect your chances of success or failure at doing given things in the future, and even whether you’re able to attempt to do certain things.
There’s absolutely nothing precluding the implementation of such a mechanic in a parser-based game. But if an author did so without spelling out in advance in some prominent manner This parser game is different from what you might expect, my guess is that a lot of players would be irked, that they’d consider it somehow dirty pool. Everyone knows that the effects of players’ actions should either be evident or, if not, discoverable and comprehensible. Having the lever in Control Room determine whether the adjacent room is full of water is fine. Being able to reach only bad endings if you failed to part with Madame Xanadu on good terms a hundred turns ago isn’t. I think the mechanic that’s normal in ChoiceScript games would be received at least as badly as that Madame Xanadu thing, and maybe worse.
I think Twine and other systems closer to straight-up hypertext carry less baggage. 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds was well-received and it has much the same sensibilities as a parser game in terms of having a model world that the player manipulates. I don’t find it hard to imagine creating a parser adaptation that was faithful to its gameplay. For many Twine games, it wouldn’t begin to be meaningful to talk about a parser adaptation. I haven’t looked under the hood to try to verify it, but for some Twine games I’ve played, I’d be surprised if there weren’t mechanics like the one I described above as the norm in Choicescript games.
But of course I would completely agree both that the model world thing is a norm for parser games. And I think lack of familiarity with that convention, or familiarity with it but a lack of interest in playing a game requiring it, especially combined with the difficulties many new users have in their basic interactions with the parser, is a thing that makes many people bounce off.
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I used to love parser games, but my interest in them has dwindled with time. Now I realize that change coincided with me aging. I started to forget things, and had to learn how to take notes well: a new skill. Still using command-line apps a lot (and making my own!) like I’ve been doing since my first computer, but that’s mostly thanks to decades of experience. Now I much prefer having a proper TUI (that’s a Text User Interface, think a GUI except in text mode) at the very least, and I strive to make my own apps extra simple+clear. So it checks out in my opinion.
Edit: because, yes, a command line interface does require good memory. You have to maintain awareness of the current situation in your head. Scrollback is a log that you can replay in your head to remember what path you followed recently, but you still have to figure out where you are now. Hybrid interfaces can offer the best of both words, but those too are tricky to do well.
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uhhh… what many interesting points !
first and foremost, I consider Legend’s interface the best IF GUI ever, up to having encouraged (at the wrong time, that is, early inform 7 era) the development of a legend-style interface i7 extension (and inform 10 still screws extensions in grand style…), so kudos to Josh for his excellent example.
I use paper maps, beacuse allows an immediate zooming & panning with eyeball Mk.I (being a man of service of order, that is, an urban warrior, quickly understanding on the field (road) where troubles during a demo/strike can lie, IS fundamental) but is an OT thing.
I agree that CLI-users can kept an abstract map in my mind, and albeit never happened the mixup between cd and N/S/E/W, I admit that often I mixup ls and L/LOOK 
I prefer trackball over mouse, and generally I’m confortable with GUI tools, e.g. I appreciate multiple tabs and, much more important, coloured syntax, whose actually reduced bug rate by 80-90%, but control-whatever & alt-somekey remain faster than menu & icons, 'nuff said.
In a certain sense, I considered, and still consider, 16-bit OS a backward step, because 8-bit BASICs incorporating OS commands formed what today can be termed an integrated shell and scripting language.
That’s all, and
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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What about people who use on-line maps? If I want to go somewhere new, I look it up on Google maps first, using street view to pick out landmarks for where to turn, etc. I also enjoy looking at maps for fun, especially maps from the past.
I have not picked up a paper map for many years.
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I would consider that a subset of this:
Just because you don’t need to print them out doesn’t mean you aren’t effectively doing the same thing.
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Ha, yeah, my initial reaction was “what do you mean, before converting?” 
Hear hear.
I think interfaces in general lie along a spectrum (in a possibility space? There are definitely multiple axes) rather than being a binary yes/no kind of thing. And today’s parsers tend to fall in a particular portion of that space, but even within the limitation of the current tools you could shift things a fair bit, and you could shift it more with different tech (again, Legend Entertainment’s systems, the Level 9 games: I just watched someone playing some of Gnome Ranger and it was kinda wild), or drawing from other command-line interfaces (tab completion is almost ubiquitous everywhere except parser games, IIRC AutoCAD would execute your GUI commands by translating them into AutoLisp expressions, which you could see on a command-line if you had it turned on). There’ve been parser games with in-game maps; that can make the space a lot more visible.
I wonder if I could dig up some of the writing from the people clinging to CLIs in the 90s when GUIs really started to take over, speculating about what some useful axes of the differences were? Might be interesting to see how much of that applies here.
Also maybe Emily Short’s Not All Choice Interfaces are Alike, too? I’ve never been keen on that particular categorization, but it’s a thought-provoking walkthrough of one possible viewpoint in some depth…
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I follow a lot of the expectations on this. I’m a parser-only player, and had a lot of experience with the command line before eventually trying a GUI. But…
My very first experiences with IF were with Scott Adams text adventures on the TI-99/4A computer. On that platform, room description, visible exits, and inventory are in a persistent block at the top of the screen. I fell in love with text adventures in that format first.
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I do a lot of wilderness hiking and geocaching so I love GPS. I like having an idea of what I’m going to encounter so I can properly prepare. So, things like looking at satellite topography online ahead of time or downloading trail maps to my GPS receiver are invaluable to me.
I think that’s spilled over to how I process parser games with a lot of rooms. I’m often (very mildly) irritated when I realize mid-play the game is bigger than I thought and I should have been keeping a map. I didn’t properly “prepare”.
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I routinely walk with a small compass in my pocket, even in my town. That is because I have little sense of orientation.
Having a compass makes me constantly aware of where cardinal directions are: not only I am faster in reaching my destination, but I can picture a coarse map in my head of where various places are in spatial relationship with each other.
Compare this with knowing how to reach a place, but not having a good idea where it stands in relationship to other places that are not part of the same path (is it north? north-east?). Everything is more enjoyable now.
I like playing IF but it is a kind of game that requires a sizeable upfront effort to make a world-model in your head. And with mental (or manual) mapping, everything feels like a chore, and this comes before I understand whether I could like the story or not. Feels like I am compass-less, so to speak.
Compare it with graphical adventure games, where the effort is simply not there and I can just download a binary and poke it for a few minutes before deciding whether to invest the necessary amount of time/effort to play it and enjoy it.
Games like Trouble in Sector 471 give you an in-game, ASCII map. I was extremely grateful to the author: that and the “limited verbs” parser streamlined the gameplay, I was immediately on my feet — wheels? — exploring and solving puzzles instead of trying to build a gamestate in my head.
Another good game in this department is The Bones of Rosalinda, which has maps which are relatively small and simple to navigate.
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So if the game pisses me off, you’ll let me type DEL *.*? Sweet!
Something that may be worth noting is that I like a parser game that lets you navigate around and solve puzzles, but I did play a couple of parser games that were more story driven (Galatea was one, never finished it though) and the progression was more abstract. I can see how that kind of game might appeal to different sensibilities that have less to do with spatial awareness and more about appreciation for creative writing and thoughtful discovery.
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Only if you let me dual boot DOS onto your machine so I can type >format C first.
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I can’t do this version of the poll. None of the methods you’ve put in the poll is reliable enough for me to particularly use, and thus I can’t really say I’ve anywhere to convert from or to.
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I myself would use the teleporter if those lazy physicists would just catch up to sci-fi and get it working.
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Okay. Not doing the poll is fine.
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